Prelude to the Final Solution: The Nazi Program for Deporting Ethnic Poles, 1939–1941 (review)

Until recently, English- and German-language scholarship dealing with annexed western Poland had focused either on the bureaucratic mechanism for resettling Volksdeutschen or on connections between Germanization schemes and the emergence of the “Final Solution.” To fill out this picture, Philip Rutherford concentrates on the anti-Polish aspects of Nazi Volkstumpolitik, specifically in the significant province of Reichsgau Wartheland. Toward this end, he fully exploits the relevant archival sources and the extensive body of scholarship covering both Nazi population programs and the origins of the Holocaust to produce a valuable contribution to the literature. It is also refreshing to see a young scholar recognize the continued validity of the pioneering contributions of Robert Koehl, many of whose conclusions he reinforces.¹

By following the development of deportation policy between September 1939 and March 1941, Rutherford explores the familiar territory of tensions between Nazi ideological goals and the realities of the wartime economy. But his focus on anti-Polish aspects allows for a comparison with the parallel track the Nazis took in anti-Jewish policy. At the same time, he expands our understanding of how the Nazis’ experience in Poland provided solid precedents for their undertakings in the Soviet Union and in the development of the Holocaust.

The book develops chronologically, beginning with a comprehensive background to the “Polish Question” of the nineteenth century. While clearly describing the vacillating nature of pre-Nazi German policy on Poland, Rutherford also reveals the element of continuity in Prussian-German thinking that came to fruition in Nazi programs of ethnic cleansing.

As for the actual Nazi plans for the population of Poland, Rutherford demonstrates that they had not begun to develop before the very eve of the invasion. Previously, Hitler’s Polish policy had been flexible and opportunistic, and he had shown little interest in the Germans residing in Poland. They, like other Volksdeutschen, were pawns either to be used to justify demands for territorial expansion or to be bargained away to placate desired allies. Once the invasion was set, Rutherford writes, “a number of bureaucratic considerations and political objectives coalesced within a few short weeks to give birth to the massive exercise in Volkstumpolitik that followed” (p. 39).

The need to avoid confrontation with his new Soviet ally led Hitler to revise Volksdeutsch policy to require this group’s removal from Soviet territory and resettlement in the former Polish lands reabsorbed into the Reich. Nazi fixations on the “Jewish Problem” consequently took a temporary back seat to the new focus on the “Polish Problem,” especially as it was driven by Volksdeutsch resettlement. However, while forced emigration as a solution to the Jewish Problem had been developing since 1938, the more extensive plans for ethnic cleansing in the former Polish lands offered greater opportunities for removing Jews and Roma from the Reich proper. The “colony” of rump Poland, the General Government, gave birth to dreams of a reservation for all “undesirables” and a helot labor force.

Heinrich Himmler’s star was on the rise as his newly created Reich Commissariat for the Strengthening of Germandom acquired full authority for Volksdeutsch resettlement, and as Reinhard Heydrich’s new Reich Security Main Office coordinated SS and Police authority to use whatever means necessary to purge the entire area of any possible threats to German rule. Their first experiment with Einsatzgruppen as murder teams produced another escalation in the solutions to the “Jewish Problem”—solutions that grew out of the primary goal of eliminating the sources of potential Polish opposition. Even before Nazi officials took control of the newly incorporated territories, regional officials and ethnic German vigilantes unleashed a spontaneous expulsion of Poles and Jews, especially from the Reichsgau Danzig-West Prussia. The victims were summarily dumped into the General Government to fend for themselves without means.

Always in conflict with the Gauleiter of Danzig, but enabled by the cooperative Gauleiter Arthur Greiser in...